Palomba Serafini Associati works - the relationship between architectural design, industrial design and exhibition design - in these fields, with a multicultural approach toward innovation and a complex, complete vision.

Conversation with Roberto Palomba…

G.T.: What is the difference between designing a product, an interior, a building or a cladding product/system? The differences in scale, in routes, in how space is used... our way of experiencing in interiors has also changed...

Roberto Palomba: Yes, something has happened. Whether you’re designing a system or designing a building, it’s all part of the designer’s profession. And so you have to respond to creative requirements and sometimes to regulatory requirements, as well as to the high expectations of the people who will be living in the spaces. To me, designing a system upstream means attempting to understand how individual components can live together in a project that has a reason for a bond. It may be a graphic process, or it may be a series of individual elements that live in connection with other elements that have a strong identity. In a kitchen, for example, there may be large hoods linking together little monolithic elements that perform minor functions, or it may be graphically characterised by a series of cupboards and drawers forming two-dimensional grids.

Roberto Palomba /Dora Laque Rouge-Zanotta

G.T.: Do you think people expect to see a little architecture in interiors, in volumes? Cars now use architecture as the ideal backdrop for every new model. A lot of architecture is now fashion, whether it's the archistars’ architecture or historical architecture. Is this part of what we expect from design? Roberto Palomba: First of all, we need to understand what kind of architecture we’re talking about. I don’t understand this schizophrenia between interiors and exteriors. Why is there a difference? In theory, an architect ought to be able to deal with the entire architectural organism. But there is often this total schizophrenia between organisms created by archistars on an urban or territorial scale, with outstanding manufactures, and then when you go and look at the interiors there’s a total vertical drop in quality.

Roberto Palomba /Collection

G.T.: So they are still two separate tracks...

Roberto Palomba: There are often two different cultures that have no meeting point. A bit like when I was living in Rome, when I went to the apartments in the Parioli district which were built after the war and on the inside, were furnished and decorated in 18th century style. And there are still traces of this schizophrenia... I hope that design will in the future be more coherent. Of course, it’s easy with systems, and in any case the architectural space is invaded by the system. Individual objects somehow live on nomadism, and somehow fail to communicate with what is around them.